The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Looks Like US Played Hardball in the Ukraine...and Against the EU

When the EU mediated a deal between the opposition and the
government, I thought Yanukovich had dodged the bullet.

Not quite.

In parsing the circumstances of Yanukovich’s downfall, it is
interesting to look for the machinations of Victoria Nuland, the State Department
neo-con (wife of Robert Kagan) who was apparently given a free hand in matters Ukrainian
by President Obama.

Consider this:

The background of Nuland’s notorious Fuck the EU audio was
her feeling that the EU was insufficiently confrontational with the Ukranian
government, especially on the issue of sanctions.

As to what “sufficiently confrontational” might look like,
consider this AFP report from back in January that showed up in the Yahoo! Sports
feed, since its subject, R. Akhmetov, is the owner of Ukraine’s most successful
football outfit
:

Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov, the owner of the Shakhtar Donetsk
football club, is having a possibly decisive influence on Ukraine's standoff
between the security forces and protesters.

Akhmetov has long been seen as a leading
ally of President Viktor Yanukovych. He has bankrolled the ruling Regions Party
which he formerly represented in parliament as an MP, and harks from the
eastern Donetsk region that is the president's stronghold.

But in a possible turning point in a
crisis that has raised fears of a prolonged civil conflict, Akhmetov on
Saturday issued a strong statement warning that the use of force against
protesters was unacceptable and the only way forward was negotiations.

…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand…

…his reasons for being so strongly against the use of a state of emergency
to forcefully end the protests may not be entirely altruistic.

According to the influential news site
Ukrainska Pravda, visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland
warned Akhmetov at a secret meeting when she visited Kiev in December that he
and other wealthy backers of the Regions Party could face EU and US sanctions
if the police used force against the protesters.

For a businessman with an international
reputation and properties outside of Ukraine, including a luxury town house in
London, this was clearly an unwelcome prospect.

…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand more please:

Akhmetov was able to control a group of at least 40 MPs from
the ruling Regions Party in the Verkhovna Rada parliament.

So what happened after the EU brokered a transitional,
power-sharing sort of deal with the EU?

Fearing that a call for a truce was a ruse, protesters
tossed firebombs and advanced upon police lines Thursday in Ukraine's embattled
capital. Government snipers shot back and the almost-medieval melee that ensued
left at least 70 people dead and hundreds injured, according to a protest
doctor.

…

A truce announced late Wednesday appeared to have little
credibility among hardcore protesters. One camp commander, Oleh Mykhnyuk, told
the AP even after the alleged truce, protesters still threw firebombs at riot
police on the square. As the sun rose, police pulled back, the protesters
followed them and police then began shooting at them, he said.

Ukrainian Parliament Deputy Speaker Ruslan Koshulynsky has announced that
more parliamentarians have withdrawn from the Party of Regions faction.

In particular, Oleksandr Volkov, Yuriy Polyachenko, Vitaliy Hrushevsky,
Volodymyr Dudka, Yaroslav Sukhy, Artem Scherban, and one more parliamentarian,
whose name Koshulynsky pronounced unintelligibly, had left the Party of Regions
faction.

Koshulynsky later announced the names of four other deputies who left the
Party of Regions faction, i.e. Viktor Zherebniuk, Ivan Myrny, Hennadiy
Vasylyev, and Nver Mkhitarian. He later added Larysa Melnychuk and Serhiy
Katsuba to this list.

Hence, the Party of Regions has lost 41 deputies, including 28 on Friday and
the other 14 on Saturday.

Don’t know if any of these were among Akhmetov’s 40
people.Would be interesting to find
out. In any case, enough Party of Regions deputies bailed to give the pro-EU forces a majority and a free hand in parliament to undertake some sweeping initiatives, like unilaterally impeaching the president, repudiating a previous constitutional revision, and releasing Yulia Timoshenko from prison.

So, by a less-than-generous view, it might be suspected that
the United States encouraged demonstrators to break the truce, with the expectation
that violence would occur and Yanukovich’s equivocal fat cat backers, such as
Akhmetov, would jump ship because the US had already informed them that their
assets in the West would be at risk under US and EU sanctions.

If this is the case, the EU perhaps has additional reason to
feel sore and resentful at the US.By
blowing up the truce and the transition deal, Nuland got Yanukovich out and “Yats”—the
preferred US proxy, Arseniy Yatsenyuk—in, but at the cost of
terminally alienating the Ukraine’s pro-Russian segment—a segment, it might be pointed
out, was actually able to elect Yanukovich in a free and fair election a while
back.

In any case, through some creative interpretation of the
Ukrainian constitution, the now West-friendly parliament has constituted itself
as the primary legitimate organ of government, selected a new prime minister,
and scheduled elections for December.

Since this new government is flat-busted, needs somewhere
north of $30 billion in fresh loans to make it through the year, one might
think the West didn’t get much of a bargain.However, it seems that everybody in the new government is gung-ho on
accepting an IMF package through which, I suppose, the Ukraine will be comfortably
chained in debt vassalage to the West for the foreseeable future and incapable
of returning to the welcoming arms of Russia.

Whether the eastern and southern Ukraine—strongholds of pro-Russian
feeling—will put up with the wrenching IMF restructuring that their western
comrades appear so eager to implement is another question.

Don’t be surprised if this miraculous offspring of Obamian righteousness
and neo-con callous bravado yields another nation-building triumph along the
lines of Libya and South Sudan, but this time with the fiasco squarely in the
lap of the Ukraine’s discombobulated EU neighbors.

It will also be interesting to see if Russia yields to its
spiteful feelings and neglects to pony up the $15 billion it had originally promised
in order to prop up Yanukovich.(Interesting thought: was all this US-encouraged upheaval timed for the
Sochi Olympics with the thinking that Putin wouldn’t dare intervene forcefully
while his precious games were underway?Hmmm.)

By openly supporting insurrection by a militant faction in
order to subject the Ukranian government to a level of stress that it, and
particularly its apparently incapable pres, Yanukovich, were incapable of
handling, I think the US crossed something of a Rubicon.It openly and enthusiastically backed a
violent putsch against a democratically-elected government it didn’t happen to
like.Neo-liberal enthusiasts, it should
be noted, splashed across this boundary without even getting their feet wet…except
from the dull-witted drooling of Western correspondents apparently besotted by
the contrived tire-burning, Molotov-cocktail tossing freedom-fighter narrative
layered over the political struggle.

Reminded me of how the media let itself get played during
the Iraq War, a period in history I’m old enough to remember, but perhaps some
gormless young journos can’t…or won’t.

The Obama administration’s new-found affection for street
riots to overthrow unfriendly elected government will get its next road test in
Venezuela.Caracas is starting to look
like Kiev.The conservative youth of the
private universities are already on the street looking for trouble and the
excuse to exercise righteous violence like their ultranationalist brothers in
Ukraine.If Carl Gibson’s articlein Reader Supported News is quoting an
authentic document, the USAID, with the help of consultants and Colombia, was
already mapping out plans to destabilize the country through economic sabotage in
late 2013 and, according to Gibson’s account, incite street confrontation:

“Whenever possible, the violence should cause deaths and
injuries. Encourage hunger strikes of numerous days, massive mobilisations,
problems in the universities and other sectors of society now identified with
government institutions.”

I don’t think there’s any question that opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez is
America’s man in Caracas.Gibson’s
article also adds the detail that a Wikileaks cable apparently links Lopez to
CANVAS, the US-funded democracy-promotion cum
regime-change outfit that Yanukovich banned from Kiev just prior to his
downfall.

Venezuela seems to fracture along class lines (not ethnic
Russian vs. Ukrainian, or regional/tribal/Cyrenic/Tripolitan like Libya, or
confessional Sunni/Shi’ite like Syria) so the task of catapulting a pro-US
elite group into power may be bloodier and more prolonged than the adventure in
the Ukraine.But I’m sure the United
States has sufficient money and patience for a prolonged struggle, especially
when the suffering is a thousand miles away from Washington.

As for the People’s Republic of China, I think the takeaway
will be 1) active US political subversion of its enemies is not just one of
those myths that target governments console or terrify themselves with 2) don’t
let opposition parties form, let alone get on the ballot 2) don’t let anybody
in the downtown square and 3) pre-emptively treat any activists with US or
Western ties as de facto subversives
and counter-revolutionaries.

It is doubtful that heightened PRC vigilance will translate
into anything near the democratic liberalization which the West ostensibly
craves for China’s benighted citizens. Instead, the regime will land on dissidents early and like a ton of bricks.

It is rather ironic that Barack Obama, the progressive
paragon, took a few hits from the Dick Cheney regime-change crack pipe, and now
apparently finds it irresistible.

Maybe he feels that he might as well grab for a few cheap
foreign policy wins, damn the consequences, because in two years he’s outta
here and President Clinton can deal with the mess.

I imagine that Alfred Nobel’s image on President Obama’s
Peace Prize medal is weeping blood tears by now.